Most of the inmates includingAndy have their own way of keeping their connections humanity. Most of the connections are little symbols or the few activities they had, like betting on who’d break down and cry, the beers on the roof, and the inmates put their names on the walls of their cells as one of the few marks they had on life. Andy’sconnections were a little bigger than the rest of the inmates; he had all of his projects.



One symbol was Andy’s bible. That was ‍an ironic symbol‍ because the warden had said that ‘he’d find salvation within”with the bible. His bible turned out to be a secret case for his little pickaxe,and with the pickaxe he built a tunnel right through the wall to freedom.



Some of the other ‍inmates kept ‍their connection by gambling, that was when they bet to see who cried first, and they bet using cigarettes as a currency. Another one is when theywere all drinking beer on the roof, and red had said “we were all free men fora moment”. One more interesting connection was when Brooks and Red had puttheir names on the wall at the home they had stayed at, as a reminder to allthey knew most of their lives, their cells.

Andy’s connectionswere his four projects. Three of them were public projects, and one was asecret one. His first one was shaping and carving the stones, the second wasbuilding the library, and the third was teaching the new guy. His secretproject was the tunnel to freedom. All of these were his connections tohumanity.



The main inmates in thestory had their own connection to humanity. Some were personal, some werepublic. For others all they’re connections had to do with prison, because theyspent most of their lives ther, they were “institutionalized”.